The Sentient Corruption (The Sentient Trilogy Book 3)

by Ian Williams

  “Shut your mouth, or I’ll shut it for you.”

  “Yeah, go on then, try it.”

  “Hey,” Gregson said suddenly. “Both of you need to shut the fuck up, or I’ll start bashing heads.” She roughly jabbed a Medi-pen into Scott’s leg to quiet him down.

  “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t know her. I know her better than I’ve ever known anyone else in my entire life. I swear, if she’s…” Rhys turned away as his bottom lip twitched.

  Graham felt the shudder from Rhys’ chest run right through him too. The anger was dissipating within the room as another much stronger emotion slowly took hold. Losing one of their own to another survivor group was playing havoc with them all.

  “Graham, take him out of here for a minute. Let him calm down,” Gregson said.

  This time Rhys was more cooperative and became easy to move. Graham pulled him back all the way to the door and then continued out onto the metal landing. For a short few beats of Rhys fluttering heart they remained close. Both were trying to keep their frustrations under control, and the more Rhys lost it the more he dragged Graham right down with him.

  “I’m as angry as you are, Rhys. We all are. But going off like that will only make it harder for us to find her.”

  “I know. It’s just I can't bear to think of her being harmed in any way. We’ve been so close these last few months. I can’t lose her.”

  “We won’t, I promise. If we want to get her back, though, then we’ll need help. There’s not going to be much time, so we have to work quickly. OK?”

  Rhys nodded and looked through the control room window at Scott one last time. Clearly the anger had yet to leave his system completely. “Tell me you have a plan.”

  “Not so much a plan, just a favour to ask. Wait here, I’ll be right back.”

  Taking three steps at a time, Graham made his way down the staircase and aimed for Captain Rigs standing among a group of his volunteers. They listened to every word he said like their lives depended on it – which at some point Graham expected they would. There was an obvious void where those who had not returned should have been. This had knocked their confidence greatly.

  Graham gently tugged on the Captain’s arm to get his attention.

  “What is it, Mr. Denehey?”

  The use of his surname made Graham back off a little; it had been far more formal than he had come to expect between them. Especially after what they had been through together only recently.

  “It’s about Phoenix. We know who has her.”

  “And who’s that?”

  “Well,” Graham turned to the side and spoke quietly to keep it as much between them as possible. “For some reason she was taken by that Conrad guy at the meeting. One of their guys was injured, so we brought him back here to patch him up. He and few of our people say they saw Conrad take her.”

  Captain Rigs looked around his group before deciding to fully engage in Graham’s conversation. “Excuse us for a minute.” The group dispersed quickly and left them free to talk. “Go on.”

  “They dragged her out through a side exit. We need to get her back.”

  “Are you asking me to agree to a rescue mission?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You know I can’t do that, Mr. Denehey. We’re only hours away from mounting the most crucial attack on Isaac’s forces in this entire war. We can’t afford to spare anyone right now. We lost a good portion of our volunteers during that last fight. If we don’t have enough of these EMPs made by dawn, then we’ve already lost. The attack is due to start at midday.”

  “I appreciate that, but I would only need a few people to join me, and Rhys.”

  “To do what, search for her block by block?”

  “If that’s what it takes, yes.”

  “That’s not going to happen. You’ll all either be killed or captured if I let you wander around the streets looking for her.”

  “Let me take Gregson then. She can protect us while we’re out there. All I’m asking for is the chance to find her.”

  “Absolutely not. We lost seven people at the meeting, I can’t risk losing any more tonight. Tomorrow is too important.”

  “But we can’t leave her with them. Surely you can spare a few people?”

  Captain Rigs forcibly moved Graham to a side wall with one hand placed firmly on the back of the neck. He then continued to speak much quieter than before. “Listen to me very carefully, Graham. I need all the hands I can get to bring down these relays. With Conrad now ignoring our radio calls and Petra entirely out of the picture, it only leaves us and Brian’s group at the fire station to hit them. I planned on having double the people I now have to work with. To maximise our attack, I've already had to drastically alter the plan. We’re now aiming to take out only around forty percent of the new relays.”

  Hearing this shocked Graham. “Wait, will that be enough?”

  “I can’t promise it will be, no. Watts has calculated that we should be able to drop a large portion of the shield, enough at least to allow the Ring to take out the rest from above. It’s a much bigger risk than if we had the people I needed. As it stands we should have enough EMPs, just not enough people to set them all off.”

  “Then we should try and get Phoenix back before it starts.”

  “No! I won’t delay the attack.”

  “For fuck’s sake. We can’t just leave her there?”

  “Keep your voice down, Graham. It won’t be permanent. Look, as soon as the shield is down I can have them try and locate her for us. But I can’t guarantee anything. Most of our resources will be needed to fight off Isaac’s forces. Unless you can get a location from Conrad’s man upstairs then I can’t help you.”

  “He won’t tell us anything.”

  “Then you have your answer already. Until the shield is down and we have the Ring at our disposal there’s nothing we can do. She’s just going to have to stick it out until we can get to her. This attack is too important to risk it all for one person. Thousands more are depending on us. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get at least four EMPs made by morning. The group at the fire station have another two to make. That gives us a crack at six of the fifteen relays.”

  Captain Rigs stepped away before Graham could say any more. He then met up with a large team of people surrounded by the pieces to each EMP bomb. He immediately ordered them into an organised line, ready to be assigned roles and for the timeframe to be explained. They were running out of time to make enough, as evidenced by the slightly frantic nature of discussions going on when he arrived.

  “So what now?”

  Graham turned around, expecting to see Rhys there, but saw himself instead. Before answering back, he checked no-one was watching; he could do without others noticing him talking to himself in the corner. “Where the hell have you been?” he asked the copy of himself.

  “We’ve been here all along, G. We didn't want to get in the way while you all talked.”

  “Fine, well, stay with me now.”

  “Sure, anything you want, mister,” the child version of Graham said from half behind the other.

  The third Graham stood to the side of them.

  “With no way of finding Phoenix,” Graham went on, “I guess we have no choice but to go ahead with the plan. After that we can go get her, and see to getting ourselves fixed too.”

  “Sounds good enough to me. I just hope Luke and the others will be ready when we send them the message tomorrow. You sure the Orb is the only way of reaching them?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good. Then tomorrow we finally get to show Isaac what we’re made of.”

  I wish I shared your enthusiasm, Graham thought. He gave a guilty look to Rhys, who stood leaning on the rails and watching him back. Without a word said between them they had communicated, and the news was not good. Rhys placed his head in his hands shortly after receiving the unspoken message.

  All they could hope for was that Phoenix would give her kidnappers eve
ry bit of what they deserved. They both knew she was more than capable of protecting herself. She would make it hard for them, possibly more than they realised. Conrad’s people would have to treat her well to get what they needed in the end.

  The question was, what did she have that they wanted?

  Chapter 24

  Time to think

  After dragging her all the way from the restaurant, Phoenix’s kidnappers had taken her on a night time walk through the streets, stopping only to evade the usual patrols. She had quickly given up on trying to escape. They were far stronger than her, and for some reason determined to take her some place.

  With a small gash on the left side of her head she had barely any fight left in her at all. She still made it as difficult as she could by dragging her feet as much as possible. A few times they had even resorted to carrying her slight figure over their shoulder.

  Once reaching the end of their journey they had entered a building and dumped her in the seat she now sat in. They had left her there for at least an hour already. She knew they were preparing their questions for her; she had been through enough of these types of interviews before to know how it all worked.

  First they would avoid the direct route until she was begging to know exactly what they were talking about. After that they were surely going to list out what they knew about her, as a way of scaring her into talking. If none of that worked then they would turn nasty.

  She was more ready for a fight than a discussion.

  With a black hood over her head, she could still make out a little of her surroundings. She sat in a small room, lit only by candlelight, with her hands chained together. A metal loop sticking out of a table in front of her kept her hands from leaving it in any way. There was barely enough chain to allow her to scratch her nose, let alone try and remove the hood. With one hand free she could make light work of the knot keeping the hood in place. With both she could tear it off and set about destroying the entire room, she felt so pissed off.

  How could I have been so fucking stupid? she thought to herself. Haven’t I been through this shit enough times already?

  Every now and again she heard talking from outside her room. Most had been far enough away for her not to hear, but a few had not. She caught a stray word, here and there, and snippets of the odd sentence, enough to give her some clue as to her reason for being there. One woman had asked her male colleague about the ‘terrorist’ brought back from the meeting. She knew she had been cast in the role of the terrorist in this instance, which told her something important. These people somehow knew her from before, when she had still worked for Anthony.

  The next conversation to occur outside her room was much closer than any other. When the rattle of keys in a lock joined it she knew she was about to have an interesting chat. Perhaps they would even give her a chance to explain herself properly. Although, only a tiny part of her believed that would be the case.

  As the door swung in it sent a light rush of air Phoenix’s way. Her hood fluttered in the small breeze, which ended as soon as the door was shut again. Now the interview could finally begin.

  “Can we get on with this already? It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good kidnapping, I just really need to pee.” Phoenix crossed her legs and shook her chains.

  The other person in the room with her ignored it. She could hear the man open a folder and begin to filter through the pages, one by one, in a deliberately slow fashion.

  “Oh, come on, I can’t go anywhere, can I?” she tried again. “I’ll even keep the hood on if you want. Just don't expect me to clean up the mess afterwards.”

  The silence was working well. Phoenix could already feel herself becoming enraged by being ignored in this way. With the hood still over her eyes it left her mind free to conjure up an image of the person she talked to. In her mind this man was evil looking, with darkness in his eyes and a demonic smile upon broken lips.

  “Are you going to say anything at all?”

  “I’m reading,” the man answered. He then turned over another page and slid it across the table to the others by his side. The whole table was his to make use of and he appeared to be making some kind of order of his paperwork. Through the hood Phoenix could only see that there were pages there.

  The man continued to read for a few minutes longer. When he had finished and his paperwork had taken up the entire surface of the table in front of him, he addressed his prisoner. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Phoenix.”

  She breathed in quickly as her name was said. Suddenly the face of evil she had imagined began to morph into everyone she had ever known. One by one she went through them all to find who it could possibly be. She certainly could not place the voice. But it was clear he had known about her before the shield went up.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “Let me ask the questions here, OK?”

  “Fine. You got it, buddy. Ask away.”

  A squeak from the man’s chair as he stood made Phoenix lean back. She was ready to kick his knees as hard as she could manage, and hoped to follow with her own knee to his face soon after. Except he avoided her side entirely and went straight around the back. There he pulled the knot of the hood loose and yanked it away from her face, leaving her struggling to find him in the gloomy light.

  “There, that’s better. Now we can talk properly,” the man said as he stepped back around the table. He made a grunt as he lowered himself into his seat. Despite the broadness of his upper body he was much smaller in the chair than expected. His body appeared most comfortable while slouching. “So, Phoenix, do you know why you are here?”

  “No idea. Who the fuck are you anyway? You’re not the one who grabbed me. Where’s that Conrad prick?”

  “My name is Derek. Conrad is here too.” The man tilted his head up to a camera in the top corner of the room.

  “Oh, I get it, too scared to talk to me yourself,” she said directly into the camera. “So, what’s so important that you had to drag me all this way? Not enough women here for you?”

  “This isn’t a joke, Phoenix. This is very much a serious situation to be in.”

  “Fine, then what’s it about then?”

  “To put it bluntly, we know you’re working for Isaac.”

  “Ok, see that’s funny. You haven’t got a fucking clue about me, have you? How can I be working for Isaac?”

  Derek tapped his finger gently upon the table, on a picture he wanted her to see. It showed an aerial shot of a shopping complex. Along with her it featured the two of Anthony’s men she had worked with on the day of Isaac’s release. “Do you deny that is you in the picture?”

  She knew it would come back to bite her at some point, just not so soon, and not right in the middle of a fight. “Obviously I don’t. It’s me. There’s a lot about that day that people don’t know. Yes, I worked for the man responsible for the terrorist attack, but I was tricked into helping. Apart from that photo, you can’t have anything else that says I work for Isaac.”

  “What about this?” Derek pulled another photo out from underneath his paperwork and placed it on top of the other.

  “Yeah, so?” Phoenix picked up the photo and gave it a quick look. It showed her walking through the street with Jack by her side. The angle of the picture told her it had come from a CCTV camera.

  “Is it just a coincidence that this photo was taken on the day the shield went up over the city? On two occasions, when something terrible has happened to this city, you were spotted nearby. You’ve been involved almost from the beginning, haven’t you? And what about these two?” Derek again produced more photo evidence, this time of two Simova technicians. “We know this man, Graham Denehey, is involved as well. Can you imagine our surprise to find you and this man working together again now? So, tell me, why did you and this man really call the meeting?”

  “You know about Graham? Why didn’t you kidnap him too then?”

  “Conrad tried to, but he simply didn’t have the man power. We weren
’t expecting to see two of the most wanted people in the country at that meeting. And when the rest of Isaac’s forces arrived he had to escape quickly, so he grabbed you. So, the meeting?”

  “The meeting was genuine, I promise. Despite what you believe about me and Graham, we are on your side.”

  “Care to explain?”

  “There’s a lot to it. Short version is that this fight against Isaac has been going on longer than you probably know. I worked for Anthony, who I found out too late was a nutter. He’d planned it all out to bring Isaac back. Simova never managed to shut him down, they lost him instead. I turned against Anthony and then found Graham and his people; they were being forced to help or their friend was going to die. That’s why all of these pictures say we’re involved, because we are, just not in the way you think.

  “As for that second photo of me, I was in the city to help find Graham. His family thought he’d died when Isaac reformed, but he was trapped somewhere. I’m there in that picture because I had no choice. Thinking I was here to help Isaac is so fucking wrong, it’s fucking laughable.”

  “OK, so tell me this then, why would one of the police forces best detectives have been ordered to track you down on the day the shield formed?”

  “I have no idea. Whose orders?”

  Derek slid a piece of paper toward her, spinning it around for her to read. It was an official document with the seal of the Mayor’s office at the top and a signature at the bottom.

  The moment she saw it she read it aloud. “Mayor Jonathan Crawley. Why would he order it?”

  “If not for a few things we’ve learnt about the Mayor recently, we would still be asking the same question. It’s one thing to have your name at the top of a list of suspects, it’s another entirely for it to be so important that the Mayor would want you found. There was a personal reason behind it, one we suspected would place you in the centre of it all. If you tell us what that reason might be and exactly what Isaac’s plans are, then maybe we can work out some kind of deal for you?”